Love them or hate them, N.W.A. changed rap, hip-hop Love them or hate them, N.W.A. changed rap, hip-hop Success of ‘Straight Outta Compton’ reminds us of game-changing group Post to Facebook Love them or hate them, N.W.A. changed rap, hip-hop Success of ‘Straight Outta Compton’ reminds us of game-changing group Check out this story on sctimes.com: CancelSend A link has been sent to your friend's email address. Posted! A link has been posted to your Facebook feed. Join the Conversation Activate your digital access. Love them or hate them, N.W.A. changed rap, hip-hop JEFFREY PEDERSON, SPECIAL TO THE TIMES Published 7:03 a.m. CT Aug. 27, 2015 | Updated 7:12 a.m. CT Aug. 27, 2015 N.W.A. released “Straight Outta Compton” in 1988. The album changed rap and hip-hop forever.

(Photo: Gannett) 10 CONNECT TWEET LINKEDIN COMMENTEMAILMORE In the history of modern music, there have been many bands that have changed the course of mainstream music. To name just a few, though there are many more, I think of the Beatles, Beach Boys, Black Sabbath, and of course the ever game-changing Nirvana. All of these bands opened the door for entire genres to evolve. Whether you like them or not, you can’t deny their influence. A couple of weeks ago, another group came back into the spotlight, and it reminded me of the profound impact they had on the music world. That group was N.W.A. I am writing this after having attended a screening of the new biopic “Straight Outta Compton” that chronicles the creation and eventual demise of N.W.A. Regardless of whether you loved them or hated them, there is no doubt they completely changed the landscape and evolution of rap/hip-hop. I really enjoyed the movie. It was a tough watch at some points, but funny and poignant at others. The film ended up drawing a reported $60.2 million in the U.S. on its opening weekend, and is showing no signs of slowing down.

I will not write a film review here, but as I mentioned, N.W.A. represented a 180-degree turn from what was happening in rap during their time. Pretty much the hardest hip-hop to date had been RUN-DMC (whom I love), but they wrote songs about their shoes and were hardly in the mold of this new thing called gangsta gap. I admit (and have admitted in the past) that I am not a huge fan of rap and hip-hop. But when N.W.A. released its debut album, “Straight Outta Compton,” in 1988, I was an impressionable teenager looking for something new to grasp on to. A lot of the punk bands I was into had turned into either skate-core or crossover speed metal, and I needed something new to annoy my parents. Enter N.W. A. ‘What do you see?’ Composed of some of the greatest talents to emerge from the ’80s, N.W.A. was the combination of Ice Cube, Eazy-E, MC Ren and Dr. Dre. Songs about drug dealing, violence against authority, misogyny, guns and pretty much anything else that would put them in the crosshairs of controversy were the norm.

Do I agree with everything they said; of course not. However, as was explained in the film, they wrote about what they saw every day; this was their life. One of the best moments in the film was when Ice Cube was being questioned at a press conference by a white reporter about the content of their music, and he replied, “What do you see when you walk out your front door?” Growing up as a middle-class white boy in the Midwest, I have to admit it was a little hard for me to relate to most of what they were laying out there. However, it cannot be denied that Dre put out some great beats, and Ice Cube and Ren really had a talent for rhymes. It is sad that the combo only lasted for one album, but what happened after Ice Cube left is a complete saga of films that could be made. Story continues below. (Photo: Universal Pictures/AP) Ice Cube went on to have a very successful solo career, and he has starred in many motion pictures, some good, some not so good. Dr. Dre has released a ton of solo albums, including the new “Compton” that is pretty amazing in its own right, not to mention his own brand of high-end Beats by Dre headphones.

Dre also launched the careers of hip hop giants Snoop Doggy Dogg, Tupac, the Notorious B.I.G. and countless others, though Suge Knight may have a different opinion on that. Unfortunately, much like the Nirvana phenomenon, N.W.A.’s popularity caused a scramble for labels to find the next great gangsta rap stars. New labels also emerged, and most of them have folded or fallen into obscurity over the years. Does anyone remember Master P? Hip-hop becomes watered-down pop Since the demise of N.W.A., the game of hip-hop has changed greatly. Much of what we hear on the radio has become a watered-down version of pop music. Sure there are still giants like Kanye West and Jay Z out there, but I honestly do not care for Kanye, especially since he discovered Paul McCartney. About the only mainstream hip-hop album I have really liked in the past 10 years has been “Life Is Good” by Nas. The good news is that most of the good hip-hop emerging today is on a local level. In Minnesota we have greats like Doomtree, Atmosphere, No Bird Sing, Toki Wright and many others. Even here in St.

Cloud we have Pop Vultures making their mark on the hip-hop scene. I have friends in many different cities, and those into hip-hop report the same phenomenon: Most of the great rap or hip-hop you will encounter is on the local level. Story continues below. (Photo: Universal Pictures/AP) How does this relate to N.W.A.? The film reveals they never thought they would be heard outside of their home turf. Turns out they were wrong and became one of the most game-changing artists of all time. Eric “Eazy-E” Wright died of complications related to AIDS in 1995, shortly after N.W.A. was set to get back together. This definitely signaled the end of the group. Who knows what may have emerged from this reunion? What is known is that all of the members of N.W.A. changed, and continue to change, the direction and landscape of hip-hop, and all hip-hop and rap artists definitely need to tip their cap to the door that N.W.A. opened for their genre. This is the opinion of columnist Jeffrey Pederson, who writes about music for Up Next. Local bands that want to get in touch with Jeffrey can do so via newsroom@stcloudtimes.com .

10 CONNECT TWEET LINKEDIN COMMENTEMAILMORE Read or Share this story: Watch the new trailer for N.W.A. biopic Straight Outta Compton | Consequence of Sound Breaking Hollywood film news for fans of comedy, drama, action, romance, and beyond Watch the new trailer for N.W.A. biopic Straight Outta Compton Forthcoming film is executive produced by Dr. Dre and Ice Cube Reddit Straight Outta Compton is the forthcoming biopic about N.W.A. , directed by F. Gary Gray and executive produced by Dr. Dre and Ice Cube . Ahead of its August 14th theatrical release, a new trailer has surfaced. The two-and-a-half-minute clip offers glimpses at the hip-hop group’s thrilling rise to fame, as well as their racially-charged clashes with police. According to a plot synopsis, the film “tells the astonishing story of how these youngsters revolutionized music and pop culture forever the moment they told the world the truth about life in the hood and ignited a cultural war.” It stars O’Shea Jackson Jr. playing his father Ice Cube, Corey Hawkins as Dr.

Dre, Jason Mitchell as Eazy-E, and Paul Giamatti as the group’s manager, Jerry Heller. Artists Straight Outta Compton (2015) | MovieFreak.com Straight Outta Compton (2015) by Sara Michelle Fetters - August 14th, 2015 - Movie Reviews Share N.W.A. Still Has Something to Say in Biopic Straight Outta Compton I can’t help but admit I’m at a loss as to what, let alone how much, to say about director F. Gary Gray’s (Set It Off, The Italian Job ) biopic of legendary rap/hip-hop supergroup N.W.A. Straight Outta Compton. When O’Shea ‘Ice Cube’ Jackson (O’Shea Jackson Jr.), Eric ‘Eazy-E’ Wright (Jason Mitchell), Andre ‘Dr.

Dre’ Young (Corey Hawkins), Lorenzo ‘MC Ren’ Patterson (Aldis Hodge) and Antoine ‘DJ Yella’ Carraby (Neil Brown Jr.) were making their play for stardom I wasn’t even in Middle School, and as multicultural as my Spokane, WA neighborhood might have been it’s not like I could relate in any single way whatsoever to anything this set of California teenagers was going through. PHOTO: Universal Pictures The genius of the film, a labor of love for all involved and a passion project for Ice Cube, Dr. Dre and Eazy-E’s wife Tomica Woods-Wright for over a decade, is that I don’t have to relate, I just have to understand. Gray, along with screenwriters Jonathan Herman and Andrea Berloff (World Trade Center), plop the viewer into the center of things, ask us to listen to what it is these masterful musicians and lyricists are saying, to stop focusing on the posturing and the four-letter words in order to look beyond the obvious and see what’s happening underneath the surface.

It is total absorption in a way these types of flicks don’t always want to embrace, the film becoming one of 2015’s most important must-see endeavors released so far this year in large part because of this. It goes without saying ‘gangsta rap’ was never my thing. Same time, each time Eazy, Dre, Cube or any of the rest decided to compose their thoughts into words and music I couldn’t help but push forward in my seat excited to hear what it was they were about to say. The first time the five took the stage together as one, their excitable manager Jerry Heller (Paul Giamatti) looking on in gleeful awe, I was captivated in a way I couldn’t quite comprehend, the energy emanating from the screen so palpable I could feel it permeate the entire theatre. By the time N.W.A. was approaching full strength, as they took the stage for their iconic Detroit performance, I could absolutely understand how a group that only put out one album could be considered one of the most influential and important of the 1990s, Gray and company staging these moments with superlative exactitude that was both impressive and mesmerizing.

But this film is more than about a myth-making enterprise, has more on its mind than just simple hero worshiping (although, admittedly, both of those things do take place); instead it longs to show things as close to the way they really were as it can in the confines of a 150-minute motion picture. Even with so many of the actual participants on board as producers, flaws, mistakes, human failings and errors in judgment are as key to the proceedings as introspective lyrics and great music. These are young men thrust into the middle of a spotlight they are in most respects ill-prepared to stand in the middle of, taken advantage of by those they surround themselves with more often than not, unable to realize it until it’s much, much too late. This is no more apparent than in the depiction of the relationship between Eazy-E and Jerry Heller. The latter might be a villain, but he’s also the first real father figure the former likely had in his life, one of the first who believed absolutely in his talents and abilities in ways no one else had up to that point.

Eazy’s inability to see what is happening is a product of many things, to be certain, but that doesn’t make the pair’s relationship any less complex or tragic, the dissolution of their partnership heartbreaking in more ways than one. PHOTO: Universal Pictures If anything, it’s his story that the film is most focused on. His climactic battle against AIDS is poignantly honest in its portrayal, his early death to the disease a striking reminder of just what was going on societally during that era and that the reach of the viral epidemic was far more expansive and invasive than most wanted to realize. How Eazy affected his bandmates, what his decisions meant to all of them, how his understanding of his own mistakes and missteps influenced their respective paths going forward, all of that is here, giving Straight Outta Compton a breadth and a depth that’s staggering. The rampant misogyny and homophobia of the period isn’t so much not dealt with as it is barely acknowledged, and for a movie so intent on wearing its heart on its sleeve and baring its soul for all to see this is an egregious misstep.

Additionally, as complex and fully realized as Jerry Heller might be (which, admittedly, is due in large part to the presence of Giamatti), Suge Knight (R. Marcos Taylor) is a monstrously one dimensional villain whose thuggery and malevolence is clear even when he’s trying to make nice with Dr. Dre in a sunny California parking lot. Finally, neither DJ Ren nor MC Yella are given near the same amount of attention or love as their three compatriots, leaving them as thinly nondescript at the end of the film as they were at the start. (Granted, even with this epic running time, fitting a lot of that in probably would have required, if not a whole extra movie, probably at the very least half of one.) For a group that came and went rather quickly, the mark N.W.A. made on the cultural, musical and political spectrum cannot be denied. Right now, with all that they affectingly put voice to suddenly back into the zeitgeist once again, with police violence against minorities being documented in a way it never has been before, it feels like this couldn’t have been released at a more appropriate moment.

Straight Outta Compton isn’t just a great musical biopic, it’s a great movie, period, and as such seeing it should be at the top of everyone’s list no matter what their racial, social, political or gender background might be the entire world over. Review reprinted courtesy of the SGN in Seattle Film Rating: 3½ (out of 4) Latest Reviews Watch The N.W.A. Biopic ‘Straight Outta Compton’ Red Band Trailer | The Source Watch The N.W.A. Biopic ‘Straight Outta Compton’ Red Band Trailer pologod February 9, 2015 feature , featured , Film , Hip Hop Culture | Hip Hop Arts and Lifestyle , Hip Hop Entertainment | Hip Hop TV, Film and Video Games , News Exclusives Check out the official trailer featuring words from two of the most visible, former members of “the world’s most dangerous group” Hitting the silver screen August 14, 2015, the long awaited motion picture about the godfathers of “gangsta rap” aptly titled Straight Outta Compton, has just released the red band trailer of the N.W.A. flick.

Starring Ice Cube‘s son O’Shea Jackson Jr. as his dad, Corey Hawkins as Dr. Dre and Jason Mitchell as the late Eazy-E, the movie titled after N.W.A.’s platinum selling debut album, goes after the essence of what the five young men from Southern California went through to become international rap representatives. Paul Giamatti plays the money hungry Jerry Heller who leans in Eazy’s ear, causing the ultimate disbandment of the crew. The trailer features an intro of Dre and Cube rolling through Compton, linking up with other emcees from the “CPT” like The Game and Kendrick Lamar in their palm tree lined, but dangerous habitat, giving viewers a front row seat of current day Compton. -Sha Be Allah( @KingPenStatus ) Straight Outta Compton: hit biopic raps up NWA story cleanly | Film | The Guardian Reel history Straight Outta Compton: hit biopic raps up NWA story cleanly The NWA-backed sweep of the rappers’ rise to success fails to note some important moments, such as Dr Dre’s violence towards women A bit like father, a bit like son ...

Ice Cube, left, and O’Shea Jackson Jr, his off-screen son and the actor who plays him in Straight Outta Compton. Photograph: Todd Mac Millan Reel history Straight Outta Compton: hit biopic raps up NWA story cleanly The NWA-backed sweep of the rappers’ rise to success fails to note some important moments, such as Dr Dre’s violence towards women Wednesday 2 September 2015 03.44 EDT Last modified on Monday 7 March 2016 08.38 EST Entertainment grade: C+ History grade: C+ NWA were a successful and controversial hip-hop act from Compton in California, active from 1986 to 1991. Straight Outta Compton review – how hip-hop pioneers NWA took on the world Read more Drugs Straight Outta Compton opens in October 1986 with Eric “Eazy-E” Wright (Jason Mitchell) in a crack house. The police show up in a six-tonne tank with a 14-foot battering ram on the front, and – without any warning – tear the front off the house, scattering crackheads to the four winds.

The action might seem far-fetched. It isn’t. In 1985, Los Angeles police chief Daryl F Gates purchased just such a tank and sent it out on to the streets, dismaying the American Civil Liberties Union. In April 1989, Gates even invited former First Lady and anti-drug campaigner Nancy Reagan to spend a night in his tank watching him bust up crack houses a mere 15 miles from her Bel Air home. Music Pinterest Is it all one big performance? Photograph: Jaimie Trueblood/AP Andre “Dr Dre” Young (Corey Hawkins) is DJing in a nightclub. In real life, he was then a member of a cheesy electro group called the World Class Wreckin’ Cru . In the movie, they’ve thoughtfully made his shiny stage costume look less embarrassing and sparkly than it really was. Dre lets his cool friend O’Shea “Ice Cube” Jackson (played by the real Ice Cube’s lookalike son, O’Shea Jackson Jr) MC on stage. The audience goes wild. Dre persuades Eazy to put up the money to record Cube’s song Boyz-N-The-Hood .

They get into a studio, but the rappers they’ve booked don’t take to Cube’s style and leave. To save their investment, Dre coaches the reluctant Eazy to rap, so he can record it himself. This is accurate. Controversy Pinterest Boyz-N-The-Hood becomes a smash hit, and NWA attract the attention of manager Jerry Heller (played by Paul Giamatti in a conspicuously villainous wig). Heller hooks NWA up with Bryan Turner of Priority Records. When he first heard NWA’s music, Turner remembered in the documentary NWA: The World’s Most Dangerous Group : “I thought it was just purely theatre. I couldn’t believe that this, you know, the things they were talking about actually happened. I mean, I’m Canadian.” Out of the blue, NWA receive a threatening letter from the FBI telling them to nix their track Fuck Tha Police. The film doesn’t fully get into how skilled Eazy-E was at turning all attempts to shut NWA up into ever greater publicity. The FBI letter was their golden ticket to an enormous youth market looking for something to horrify even quite liberal parents who had grown up in the 1960s and 1970s.

NWA sold 3m copies of their first album. Police When NWA play Detroit in 1989, local police warn them off playing Fuck Tha Police . They do anyway – and are chased off stage by angry cops, thrown to the ground in the parking lot and bundled into a police van. In real life, NWA finished the gig and went back to their hotel without being arrested. The police waited in the lobby, suspecting the rappers would be down at some point to scoop up some of the groupies loitering around. When they did so, they were nicked. Women Pinterest Women in this film are visible mostly in the form of gyrating bottoms, with two potentially interesting characters – Dre’s mother, Verna Young (Lisa Renee Pitts), and Eazy’s girlfriend (later wife), Tomica Woods (Carra Patterson) – given far too little screen time to develop. The real Dr Dre was a producer on Straight Outta Compton, so it’s not surprising his personal history has been tidied up.

In the middle of NWA’s feud with Ice Cube (covered in some detail in the film), Dre physically attacked Dee Barnes , a TV music host he felt had disrespected NWA by giving Cube’s side of the story. He pleaded no contest to her charges of assault and battery. More than one former girlfriend has also accused him of physical violence. Dre recently issued a blanket apology “to the women I’ve hurt” in the New York Times . NWA’s music was replete with violence against women – there can’t be many songs more grotesquely misogynist than One Less Bitch, in which Dre fantasises about letting his friends gang-rape a sex worker before he murders her. Is any of this examined in the movie? Nope. History is written by the victors, and the victors in this story weren’t women. People Pinterest Historically speaking, it’s accurate that the initially close buddies in NWA fell out over money and fame, before they realised what really mattered was friendship. It’s just unfortunate that historical accuracy here constitutes a massive cliche.

The second half of Straight Outta Compton trudges through a series of grievances, with a procession of lookalike actors playing people like Snoop Dogg and Tupac Shakur for about 30 seconds each. There are fine performances: Mitchell, Hawkins and Jackson are all strong, and R Marcus Taylor makes Suge Knight memorable despite his relatively few lines. But there are so many characters it’s difficult to connect with any of them. As for the political fallout from gangsta rap, NWA had already split when the Los Angeles riots happened in 1992 : an event their music had effectively predicted. During those riots, many spoke of Los Angeles becoming a “war zone”. Arguably, it had already become a war zone some years before when the city authorities decided to deploy those six-tonne tanks against civilians. Characters In its last act, Straight Outta Compton becomes The Eazy-E Story – but it hasn’t sustained enough of a buildup for the final scenes to be truly moving. Fascinating details are thrown away in seconds, such as the fact Eazy once went to a Republican fundraising dinner at the White House at a time when he was, in conservative American terms, public enemy number one.

He had donated money to a children’s charity under his real name, Eric Wright, and they invited him by accident. “I’m not no fucking Republican, you know,” the man himself said. “If I go down there it’s to start some shit … I paid $1,500 for $1 million of press.” If only this film had such a sense of mischievous wit. Verdict Don’t be taken in by all the profanities: as far as history goes, this is definitely the clean version. Biopic 'Straight Outta Compton' Tells The Epic Story Of Hip-Hop And N.W.A | CPR Biopic 'Straight Outta Compton' Tells The Epic Story Of Hip-Hop And N.W.A By Mandalit del Barco, NPR News Aug 14, 2015 Listen to the Story In the late 1980s, Los Angeles hip-hop group N.W.A created a sensation and controversy with their music, which was labeled gangsta rap. Like the group's story, the making of their much-anticipated biopic, Straight Outta Compton, is filled with drama.

From the jump, the movie is a raw look at the rise of N.W.A — five tough, talented boyz-n-the-hood who became provocative hip-hop icons. It's the story of producers Dr. Dre and DJ Yella, rappers MC Ren, Ice Cube and Eazy-E, whose character in the film explains to their manager what N.W.A stands for: "Niggaz Wit Attitudes." The movie depicts how their attitudes were shaped in the badlands of Compton, a city in south-central Los Angeles County with a reputation for drugs, crime and street gangs and a shocking murder rate. After years of getting racially profiled and harassed by the police, N.W.A obscenely defied the cops on vinyl and onstage. Music Intended To Provoke One scene re-enacts a 1989 concert in Detroit as the band performs their song "F*** tha Police." The scene shows the cops descending onto the stage, inciting the audience to protest. The song had earlier prompted the FBI to write an angry letter to N.W.A's label, Ruthless Records, which in turn used it to generate publicity.

"This kind of counter-cop resistance music existed before N.W.A, but N.W.A gave it its name," says Dan Charnas, author of The Big Payback, the History of the Business of Hip-Hop. The former writer for The Source magazine says N.W.A's diatribes against police brutality put West Coast rap on the map. And Charnas says their songs are still relevant today. O'Shea Jackson, who goes by the name Ice Cube, was just 16 when he joined N.W.A to write what he called reality raps. "We always saw ourselves as street reporters," he told NPR, noting that "F** tha Police" continues to be used during protests against the police, from Los Angeles to Ferguson, Mo. "This song was bigger than N.W.A at that point — it was an anthem," says Ice Cube. "We just wasn't five guys crying wolf or complaining about our little incidents with the officers, but that it was an epidemic and it was everywhere." The movie includes vulnerable moments of brotherhood and friendship, and a moment during the 1992 LA riots depicting the truce between the Bloods and the Crips gangs.

The film also includes the group's musical beefs, their business dealings with manager Jerry Heller and menacing incidents involving former bodyguard Suge Knight, who co-founded Death Row Records with Dr. Dre. Long Road To Making The Film Ice Cube, who is also one of the movie's producers, says getting Straight Outta Compton made was rough. "It was hard to get the financing that we needed, to license all the music we needed, to also get a studio behind the movie that wouldn't treat it like a typical hip-hop biopic," he says. "Then you had calls and threats from Jerry Heller to Suge Knight, so it just was a mountain." Ice Cube, now a Hollywood actor and screenwriter, says he also had to convince Dr. Dre to drop his skepticism. "He was like, 'Don't touch our history, don't mess with our legacy, don't mess it up,'" Ice Cube recalls. "And I'm like, 'We're not messing it up, we're gonna enhance it.' I just told him that we're not gonna be wack." Dr. Dre eventually joined Ice Cube to produce the movie.

But the whole venture took more than 11 years, says executive producer Bill Straus, who began his career as a production assistant on Ice Cube's movie Boyz n the Hood. Straus says the key was getting Eazy-E's widow, Tomica Woods-Wright, to release the rights to N.W.A's music. "She had a reputation of being guarded," says Straus. "I think a lot of people had come at her, right after Eazy died — she'd inherited a lot of money. And I think that experience, like, sort of frayed her a little bit." Straus says one of the writers invited her to meet. "The first hour, she seemed sort of guarded, but after a while it just became this love-in. And she told us so many stories about Eric. She took her shoes off; by the end of the meeting she was crying." Controversy Before Filming Woods-Wright also signed on as co-producer on the film. The movie, like N.W.A's music before it, has already been criticized for its misogyny.

Casting calls offended many when they asked for "the hottest of the hottest" girls with "great bodies;" "light-skinned" girls with "small waists [and] nice hips," as well as "medium to dark skin tone" African-American girls who are "poor" and "not in good shape." The filmmakers don't apologize for the anti-female lyrics and dismiss their early antics as boys will be boys. But all these decades later, Dr. Dre's new album, inspired by the movie, includes the song "Loose Cannons" in which the rapper kills a woman and buries her body. The song is not in the movie Straight Outta Compton. But executive producer Straus says the first drafts of the script did include a scene in which Dr. Dre brutally attacks TV host Dee Barnes during a record release party. That alleged incident in 1991, for which Barnes filed a $22 million lawsuit, didn't make it into the final cut of the movie. Writer Dan Charnas says that's no surprise. "I think this movie is kind of a hagiography, because N.W.A did do some significant things in our culture. But I don't expect Dr.

Dre to be honest or introspective about the Dee Barnes thing. Because he's never been honest or introspective about the Dee Barnes thing." Dr. Dre declined to be interviewed by NPR. There are other incidents alleged to have happened in real life that didn't make it into the movie. Director F. Gary Gray told NPR, "The original version of this movie was three hours and 30 minutes long, and the original script was almost close to 150 pages. And you just have to make a lot of decisions when you're in a process like this, 'cause you can't release the Gone with the Wind. They call it the Lord of the Rings version. It was so long. And we just had to really pick and choose, and I think we picked the right things to tell the story." Keeping It Real Gray says he wanted the movie to be authentic. He put his actors, including Ice Cube's son, O'Shea Jackson Jr., through a hip-hop boot camp, teaching them to walk, talk and rap like they did in LA in the 1980s and '90s.

"Instead of hunching down and getting low like these guys perform nowadays," said Gray, "standing up straight with chin out with bravado was part of it, with their chest out." Gray says he insisted on filming on location in Compton and South Central LA, though he shot scenes of the LA riots in the San Fernando Valley. He says audiences might be surprised the movie is more than just a long rap video. "Some people say, 'Hey, it's something kind of Shakespearean about this movie,' " Gray said. "You have brotherhood and betrayal, you have tragedy and triumph, the rags-to-riches element. Think about it: Dr. Dre starts in a garage spinning on two turntables. Then he becomes a billionaire? That's crazy." Of course not everyone from N.W.A's heyday is a billionaire or a movie star. Suge Knight is in jail awaiting a murder trial after allegedly running down two people during the shoot for a commercial for the movie. Still, N.W.A's music resonates across the country as protests against police brutality take place. When the pioneering album Straight Outta Compton came out in 1988, it went double platinum.

Now, Universal Pictures hopes N.W.A's story is a hit on the big screen. Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit . Hide Watch the official trailer for N.W.A. biopic Straight Outta Compton | Consequence of Sound Breaking Hollywood film news for fans of comedy, drama, action, romance, and beyond Watch the official trailer for N.W.A. biopic Straight Outta Compton Reddit The first trailer for the N.W.A. biopic Straight Outta Compton has received its world premiere. (If you recall, the trailer was first screened during an Ice Cube concert in December.) Watch below. Directed by F. Gary Gray, the film stars O’Shea Jackson, Jr. playing his father Ice Cube, Corey Hawkins as Dr. Dre , Jason Mitchell as Eazy-E , and Paul Giamatti as the group’s manager, Jerry Heller. It hits theaters on August 14th. Dre and Ice Cube, who serve as executive producers, appear in the trailer’s opening, as does Kendrick Lamar.

Review: 'Straight Outta Compton' : NPR MC Ren (Aldis Hodge), DJ Yella (Neil Brown, Jr.), Eazy-E (Jason Mitchell), Ice Cube (O'Shea Jackson Jr.) and Dr. Dre (Corey Hawkins) form the NWA hip hop group in Straight Outta Compton. Jaimie Trueblood/Courtesy of Universal Pictures hide caption toggle caption Jaimie Trueblood/Courtesy of Universal Pictures MC Ren (Aldis Hodge), DJ Yella (Neil Brown, Jr.), Eazy-E (Jason Mitchell), Ice Cube (O'Shea Jackson Jr.) and Dr. Dre (Corey Hawkins) form the NWA hip hop group in Straight Outta Compton. Jaimie Trueblood/Courtesy of Universal Pictures "I can make you legit." That's the promise Jerry Heller, a veteran rock manager, makes to Eric "Eazy-E" Wright in an early scene in Straight Outta Compton, a mostly exhilarating biopic about L.A. hip-hop legends N.W.A. The phrase missing from the end of that first sentence is "...with the white people who hold all the power in the music industry." It doesn't need to be said.

Even with talents as electric as Andre Young and O'Shea Jackson—future icons we'd come to know as Dr. Dre and Ice Cube, respectively—N.W.A. cannot cross over to the mainstream without getting past white gatekeepers. And if that means signing on with a backroom operator like Heller, the trade-off seems reasonable to five young men looking for a way out of the ghetto. They can renegotiate later. Named after N.W.A.'s breakthrough album, the sprawling Straight Outta Compton is about many things: A watershed moment in music history, past and present racial tensions connecting Rodney King's L.A. to Michael Brown's Ferguson, the power of "reality rap" to tell uncomfortable truths and incite controversy. But above all, the film celebrates the All-American values of hard work and entrepreneurship. It pays tribute to black artists who made themselves legit, years after millions of album sales and sold-out arena shows failed to bring them real control of their careers. How do we know they're legit now? Dr. Dre and Ice Cube produced this major-studio movie as a monument to their achievements.

Article continues after sponsorship There's no getting around the self-mythologizing aspect of a biopic produced by its subjects and the way it papers over less heroic facts about these men, like Dre's assault on journalist Dee Barnes . It would not be that cynical to call Straight Outta Compton an act of brand extension or a gauche attempt by hip-hop royalty to shape their cultural legacy. Director F. Gary Gray, whose ties to Ice Cube go back to their 1995 comedy hit Friday, starts with Eazy (Jason Mitchell) running drugs in Compton before taking his experience and business acumen into a more legitimate field. Looking for money to realize their musical ambitions, Dre (Corey Hawkins), a virtuosic club DJ, and Ice Cube (O'Shea Jackson, Jr., Cube's real-life son), a ferocious lyricist and rapper, turn to Eazy for funding and get more than they bargained for. Along with two other members, MC Ren (Aldis Hodge) and DJ Yella (Neil Brown, Jr.), they find some success in launching the Ruthless Records label, but it isn't until Eazy strikes a deal with Heller that N.W.A.

can get the distribution and promotion necessary to propel them to crossover superstardom. The recording of the Straight Outta Compton album and the cross-country bacchanal that followed is by far the strongest section of the film. Gray and his exuberant young cast seize on the joys of creative collaboration and the purity of art as an end in itself, before larger cultural forces take hold and yank them in unwelcome directions. The tour crackles with thrilling volatility, with the highs of live shows and hotel-room orgies checked by the lows of media scolds and First Amendment conflicts over the rage-filled anthem "F*** The Police." Even when they're tossed into a paddy wagon in Detroit for allegedly instigating a riot, they're able to see it all as a grand cross-country adventure. Once the group splinters off into rival factions, due mainly to Eazy and Heller's partnership freezing the others out, Straight Outta Compton sags a little from a formlessness which plagues most artist biopics. In two-and-a-half hours, the film dutifully ticks off the musicians' greatest moments: The founding of Death Row Records with the pathological Suge Knight (played by cigar-chomping fury by R.

Marcos Taylor), the solo successes of Cube's AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted and Dre's The Chronic, the "eureka" moment of Dre and Snoop Dogg stumbling on the keyboard riff for "Nuthin' But a 'G' Thang." As in life, getting back to N.W.A. proves difficult for the movie to do. But if any film should be forgiven its excesses, it's Straight Outta Compton, which is about the clashes and camaraderie among men whose unruliness sparked a cultural moment that was beyond their ability—and their willingness—to contain. Their story is too big for a single movie, but Gray's high-gloss abridgment latches on powerfully to their hard-won independence and self-actualization, suggesting that true freedom is more difficult to achieve than success. For the members of N.W.A., escaping the slums is easier than getting out of a contract.

Question: The 2015 film Straight Outta’ Compton was a biopic of which rap/hip hop group?
Answer: N.W.A.